Our capabilities enable us to provide complete support for all types and steps of polyclonal antibody production: from peptide design, synthesis and carrier protein conjugation to animal immunization, serum collection, titer analysis, and final antibody purification. We specialize in antigen design and generation of custom peptide antibodies and monospecific peptide antibodies to highly discrete epitopes. We also immunize with recombinant proteins or protein fragments provided by you (or expressed and purified by us using cDNAs from our extensive in-house library) to generate antibodies in rabbits, chickens, goats, guinea pigs, mice or rats.

Our detailed knowledge of antigen determining factors (e.g., size, localized secondary structure and antigenicity) allow us to produce custom antibodies with unmatched specificity, affinity and assay utility. This expert service increases the probability that you will obtain a polyclonal antibody or monoclonal antibody capable of distinguishing among even highly related proteins within complex mixtures to characterize protein expression patterns using IHC, ICC, IF, FACS, ELISA, Western blotting or immunoprecipitation (IP, Co-IP, ChIP).

Highlights

Six host species options—select one of three rabbit immunization protocols or choose from guniea pig, chicken, goat, rat, or mouse protocols

Customizable and adaptable—add additional animals to any standard protocol; decide later to continue animals for additional boosts and bleeds

Online project tracking and management—all antibody production services use our exclusive Thermo Scientific OpenProject Tool, a web portal that gives you real-time information about the status and progress of your antibody production projects, as well as complete management control over next steps

Overview of standard animal immunization schedules and protocols for polyclonal antibody production: Each protocol applies to a single antigen injected into both animals (5 for mice), resulting in the indicated total output of serum (or eggs) for the multiple animals. Any schedule can be extended or otherwise adapted during the project by communication through the OpenProject Tool. Click protocol names for additional information about each protocol.

† Not listed are the pre-immune (control) bleed and primary injection, which initiate every protocol. Bleeds listed as "test-bleeds" are delivered to the customer but are not counted in the volumes given in column 3 (Total antiserum).

Choosing the host species

Rabbit: Use 95% of the time. Has the best ability to respond to the broadest classes of antigens. Rabbits also generally provide the greatest yields in the shortest period of time.

Chicken: Good substitute for rabbits when rabbit antibodies have failed to produce the desired reactivity or when researchers need another species antibody to label another protein at the same time or label a different subpopulation of the same protein.

Guinea Pig: Guinea pig antibodies are really popular choices as well for secondary species labeling. They are also well-known for their lower backgrounds in drosophila research.

Rat: Rat is rarely used as a polyclonal antibody source, but they can be useful when only limited amounts of antibody are needed.

Mouse: Primarily used for generating monoclonal antibodies due to the small volume of antibody that can be obtained.

Goat: The large-scale production option for polyclonal antibodies. The main drawback of this option is that goats take longer to respond and reach maximize titer.